New Orleans’ dance community enjoyed a loving, romantic pas de deux with international ballet star Ivan Nagy, who died on Saturday (Feb. 22).

Mr. Nagy performed with the top ballet companies in the world, including the American Ballet Theatre, was considered a favored partner of ballerinas in the 1970s including Natalia Makarova, Gelsey Kirkland and Cynthia Gregory.

Mr. Nagy, who had been working as artistic adviser to the Hungarian State Opera House Ballet, lived, with is wife, Australian ballerina Marilyn Burr, in Valldemossa, on the island of Majorca, according to a Feb. 25 obituary in The New York Times. He was visiting a cousin in Budapest for lunch when he died suddenly.

After his surprise retirement from dancing in 1978, Mr. Nagy went on to direct several ballets — including one with a New Orleans connection. He served as an artistic director in a unique collaborative arrangement between the New Orleans and Cincinnati ballet organizations in the 1980s, and while the partnership didn’t last very long, Nagy’s connection to the Crescent City remained to the very end.

Mrs. Besthoff said she’d spoken with the couple shortly before they left their home in Majorca for Budapest, where he died of as-yet undisclosed causes.

While critics were often mixed of their approval of Mr. Nagy as a virtuoso performer, they were almost unanimous in their praise of his work as a partner to the great ballerinas of the day.

International ballet star Ivan Nagy and his wife, Marilyn Burr, tour the San Francisco Plantation House in Garyville in 2012 with their hosts, New Orleanians Walda and Sydney Besthoff. Mr. Nagy died on Feb. 22, 2014. (Photo courtesy Walda Besthoff)

“He was attentive, just as he was in real life,” Walda Besthoff recalled. “He was such a gallant suitor. He was there for the ballerina. He wasn’t there for himself; he was there to showcase her. His concern for his partner was the main thing. I think the ballerinas knew they would look their best if they danced with Ivan.

“You could feel this caring prince onstage. He was just everything that a noble male figure can be.”

Nagy drew equal praise locally as a mentor and adviser, said Joseph Giacobbe, co-artistic director of the Delta Festival Ballet and one of the New Orleanians who helped bring Mr. Nagy to the Crescent City to serve as an adviser for a couple seasons in the early 1980s. He remembers Mr. Nagy working with the dancers as they went through their paces inside the old Newcomb College “before they even had a dance department.

“He came in and did this wonderful work,” Giacobbe said. "He was just such a charming man, an amazing talent. He had a nice way of presenting everything to the younger dancers. And he had a sort of impish quality. My wife (the late Gwen Delle Giacobbe) used to call him a male Zsa Zsa Gabor. They both had that Hungarian charm, and she meant it endearingly."

Between his interactions with the Besthoffs and Giacobbes, Mr. Nagy enjoyed dining at New Orleans' legendary restaurants, including Galatoire's, Antoine's, Arnaud's and Commander's Palace. While staying with the Giacobbes and advising the Delta Festival Ballet, Nagy was a charming house guest. One morning he noted Joseph Giacobbe's habit of pouring a spot of coffee for his dog, so Mr. Nagy leaned down, pulled his lit cigarette from his mouth and offered the dog a puff.

“He charmed everybody, but on top of all that he had something of value to offer the ballet," Giacobbe added. "Some artists come with great reputations but don’t deliver as teachers. Ivan delivered.”